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Yesterday the blinds for the basement windows came in and the painter finished spraying the base color for the house. I was able to knock a few things off my list last night:

Replace the outside light fixtures (no more brass!)

Install the blinds in the three downstairs windows

Replace the brass peep-hole in the front door with one that has a nickel finish.

Replace the ugly plastic doorbell with one that has a nice metal face.

Progress! Having the blinds makes the rooms feel a lot more “finished” – no more staring at the concrete window wells. 3 Day Blinds delivered a quality product; of course it took nearly two weeks to get the darn things, but they fit great.

I have bit of a compulsive problem with lists – as soon as I finish one thing, the next thing on the list becomes my “must do” event. This tends to work well when I’m creating software because I never leave a feature half-complete; the unfinished details niggle at me. However, when waiting on others, I really should do a better job letting this stuff go.

And an excellent bit of news today – the 2.5ghz quad-core PowerMac G5’s were finally released. The price went up a bit, but the price of the 30″ Cinema Display dropped so they basically offset each other. I’m getting my order in today – I hope.

I don’t buy new systems frequently, but when you use something ~60 hours a week, it makes sense to upgrade every so often.

My last desktop purchase was in 1999, I bought the PowerMac G4 dual 500mhz and the 22″ Cinema Display.

Since then, I used a 15″ PowerBook G4 (TiBook) for ~2 years and the 17″ PowerBook G4 I’ve been using for the last year and a half. The 17″ PowerBook will still be in service as my mobile machine, but I needed something faster (and with more storage capacity) for my main development.

Not sure what you’re doing with your todo lists, but at work I have the separated out into different categories based on status.

“Running Tasks” -> basically stuff I can do
“Waiting On Others” -> yeah, that stuff
“Deferred” -> Stuff that doesn’t have a deadline and isn’t important
“Completed” -> Like a wall of fame

I normally only view one at a time, which is usually the “Running Tasks”. That way I don’t get distracted by things I can’t do or shouldn’t be doing.
Reminders to follow people up about thing you’re waiting for from them should go in the “Running Tasks” too.